Journal of Human Security | 2014 | Volume 10 | Issue 1 | Pages 4‒11

DOI: 10.12924/johs2014.10010004

ISSN: 1835-3800

Research Article

The Praxis of Social Enterprise and Human Security:

An Applied Research Agenda

Malcolm D. Brown

School of Arts & Communication, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia;

E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +61 746311062; Fax: +61 746311063

Submitted: 5 November 2013 | In revised form: 29 January 2014 | Accepted: 3 February 2014 |

Published: 21 February 2014

Abstract: The growth of social enterprise within development NGO work might lead one to

suspect it has been irredeemably corrupted by neo-liberal capitalism. However, using the tools

of capitalism is not the same as subscribing to the values of capitalism. This paper is situated at

the intersection of five fields: human security, international development, social enterprise,

social franchising, and left-wing anti-capitalist thought. It examines the relevance of social en-

terprise to human security and to development, the relationship between social enterprise and

the anti-capitalist values of the left, and it then focuses on social franchising—a subset of social

enterprise that highlights the importance of cooperation—suggesting that it may be a useful

methodology for NGOs carrying out educational work in parts of the developing world. It syn-

thesises and extends ideas that I have presented elsewhere [1-3], it draws on ethnographic

fieldwork on the Thai-Burma border, and it puts forward an agenda for further applied research

that is rooted in a sociological analysis of civil society and contributes to the human security

paradigm.

Keywords: anti-capitalism; human security; international development; left-wing thought;

praxis; social enterprise; social franchising

1. Human Security and Social Enterprise

There is no commonly agreed definition of social en-

terprise, but I provisionally define it as a practice

which is motivated by the objective of solving social

and/or environmental problems, but which uses the

tools of capitalism, especially trade, to do so. To begin

refining this definition, it is appropriate to identify

three distinct social enterprise paradigms, each of

which instantiates a broad set of values and, con-

sequently, a particular conceptualisation of the field

and its practices: the American approach, which em-

phasises the role of the entrepreneur; the European

approach, which views social enterprise as an evolution

of the cooperative; and the Asian approach, the social

business paradigm, which is rooted in the work of

under a Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

Muhammad Yunus. The Asian paradigm is noteworthy,

because it constitutes an approach to development

which has emerged from the developing world itself.

The contributions of Muhammad Yunus and

Amartya Sen are especially notable in bridging the

fields of social enterprise and human security. Both

have contributed to academic discourse and practice

within these fields. Yunus's development of microcredit

has had a practical impact on the lives of poor people

around the world, and has contributed to their human

security by improving their economic security; he has

also contributed significantly to the theory of social

business and social enterprise (e.g. [4]). In Sen's

case, not only has he contributed directly to the field

of human security as an academic, but he has also

contributed to United Nations discourses of human

security, human rights, and development. What is

more, there is an 'Asianness' to their work that is both

appreciable and significant, as it is a developing-world

discourse of development and, by extension, of human

security.

Yunus's impetus came from observing the lives of

the rural poor in Bangladesh, and his model was

initially conceptualised as a local response to local

circumstances. Yet, it has been applied not only in the

developing world, but also to situations of poverty in

the United States, continental Europe, Scotland, and

Japan, among others ([4] pp. vii‒xxiv, 160‒162).

Similarly, Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy show that Sen's

central contributions to the social sciences were made

in response to the development needs of the South

Asian subcontinent:

Sen's theoretical revolution, in the technical

language of 'functionings' and 'capabilities', was

in tandem with the practical dictates of Mahbub

ul-Haq, the Pakistani planner associated with the

foundation of the UNDP Human Development

Approach, who posed a simple statement that

the purpose of all public policies is to increase

people's choices. In his 'Development as Free-

dom', Sen elaborated on why and how freedom is

at the same time the main goal and the main

means to achieve development ([5] p. 20).

Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy locate their own per-

spective within an experience of the developing world

and its relations with the West:

…the collaboration brought together one Iranian

woman who had been educated in American uni-

versities and had worked in the UN before moving

to teaching, and an Indian woman steeped in the

tradition of activism that, fortunately, does not

escape the faith of intellectuals in India ([5] p. 5).

Using the language of 'the South' and 'the North'

(broadly equivalent to the 'developing' and 'developed'

or 'Westernized' countries of the world), they point to

'the collective experience…of mistrust…with concepts

that came from international organizations, which to

the South, were often seen as institutions led by

powerful Northern nations. Whether it was democracy,

human rights and now human security, the discourses

smacked of power in the construction of the terms'

([5] p. 4). This does seem like an appreciably

Southern paradigm, which elucidates the

'Northernness' of some others.

This is especially apparent when they discuss the

notion of 'humanitarian intervention', a particular use of

the concept of human security in international politics

which has extended the just war theory to one that

legitimises war when it is prosecuted for reasons, or

pretexts, of human security ([5] pp. 196ff). The lack of

intervention in Rwanda in 1994, and the actual inter-

vention in Kosovo in 1999, have both been debated

extensively. The Rwandan case has been used to justify

subsequent interventions in Kosovo, Iraq, and Libya, for

example, although Chomsky has argued that the inter-

vention in Kosovo 'greatly accelerated slaughter and

dispossession' ([6] p. 81). Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy

observe that 'incidents of selective humanitarian inter-

vention have made much of the South, especially Civil

Society, cynical of the concept to the extent of rejecting

it' ([5] p. 198). They cite Walden Bello as an example:

…most of us, at least most of us in the global

South, recoil at Washington's use of the human-

itarian logic to invade Iraq. Most of us would say

that even as we condemn any regime's violations

of human rights, systematic violation of those

rights does not constitute grounds for the vio-

lation of national sovereignty through invasion or

destabilization. Getting rid of a repressive regime

or a dictator is the responsibility of the citizens of

a country [7].

Although none of this is conclusive, it is at least

suggestive of a distinctively Southern human security

paradigm, albeit one that is incomplete, and that has

gained limited acceptance in the developing world.

The existence of such a paradigm may or may not be

interesting in itself, but it is significant in that it allows

its proponents to criticise the tendency of some in the

South to reject human security in its entirety as a tool

of Western neo-imperialism. Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy

say that 'the advent of human security should be

seen, instead, as the triumph of the South to put

development concerns into global security discus-

sions', because 'a human security approach for the

South would allow it to shed international light on the

concerns of underdevelopment and individual dignity

at a time when state-based interests are increasingly

being used in the global war against terrorism' ([5] p.

35). And for Mahbub ul-Haq, human security par-

adigms create the potential for a 'new partnership

between the North and the South based on justice not,

on charity; on an equitable sharing of global market

opportunities, not on aid; on two-way compacts, not

one-way transfers; on mutual cooperation, not on

unilateral conditionality or confrontation' ([8] p. 5). It is

my contention that Yunus's social business paradigm

is an extension of this distinctly Southern human

security paradigm, because it is rooted in an empirical

observation of Southern conditions, and premised on an

equal intellectual dialogue between North and South.

2. Social Business

Yunus distinguishes social business—his preferred

term—quite sharply from other phenomena within the

social economy ([4] pp. 3‒12), which includes social

enterprise and social entrepreneurship, cooperatives,

corporate social responsibility, social franchising, and

some practices of donor-based charity and philan-

thropy. However, they also have much in common,

and Yunus's discussion of social business is a good

starting point because of its clarity and applicability.

Yunus identifies seven principles of social business,

which, in his words, are 'key characteristics', 'the core

of social business', 'a touchstone and a constant

reminder of the values that are at the heart of the

social business idea' ([4] pp. 2‒3). They also define,

loosely, the spirit of social enterprise and of the social

economy more broadly, including social franchising,

which I shall discuss later. They are:

1. The business objective is to overcome poverty, or

one or more problems (such as education, health,

technology access, and environment) that threaten

people and society—not to maximise profit.

2. The company will attain financial and economic

sustainability.

3. Investors get back only their investment amount.

No dividend is given beyond the return of the original

investment.

4. When the investment amount is paid back, profit

stays with the company for expansion and improve-

ment.

5. The company will be environmentally conscious.

6. The workforce gets market wage with better-

than-standard working conditions.

7. Do it with joy!!! ([4] p. 3)

Of course, we could not realistically use these seven

principles as a simple checklist to determine whether

an entity is a social business or not, not least because

there are potential conflicts and contradictions between

them, especially when social and economic gains

become contingent on ecological impoverishment.

Furthermore, social business and other phenomena

within the social economy are more like different

dialects of the same language than different languages.

These seven principles reflect the spirit or essential

baseline motivations of social business, social enter-

prise, and other entities within the social economy or

third sector, and they apply to all three paradigms that

were mentioned at the beginning of this article.

What they point to is an ethos of using the tools of

capitalism to solve the human security and envi-

ronmental problems that have been created and

exacerbated most damagingly by capitalism. Even if

this is unrealistic, using the tools of capitalism is

certainly not the same as subscribing to the values of

capitalism. To the extent that social business can be

classed as capitalism, it is capitalism with a triple

bottom line—people, planet, and profit—with the

important proviso that profit itself is a tool, not an end

in itself. The search for profit is not the driving force

of social business. Social business (at least Type 1

social business [9]) can rather be described as

involving business-like management of resources to

achieve a social objective. Yunus argues that 'a

complete break from the for-profit attitude' is essential

to social business ([4] p. 16, added emphasis), though

I would also like to emphasise a break from the

competitive ethos of capitalism. On that note, Yunus

states that a cooperative can be a social business

when it is owned by poor people ([4] p. 8)—a Type 2

social business [10]—and it can be further observed

that ownership by the poor has always been an

intrinsic feature of the cooperative movement, from

Robert Owen in industrial-revolution New Lanark to

the Fair Trade movement in developing countries and

international trade today. Grameen Bank, the micro-

credit organisation founded in Bangladesh by Yunus

himself, has since its foundation been a cooperative as

much as it has been a social business.

Importantly, Yunus points out that it is relational

networks that have allowed social business and

microcredit to exist. Not only do social norms and

cooperative ownership ensure a high repayment rate

on microloans—far higher than is normal for com-

mercial banks in the West—but the development of

civil society has also gone hand in hand with the

economic empowerment of the poor. Yunus states:

In the early years of Grameen Bank, strong

cultural norms in Bangladesh made it hard for us

to attract female borrowers…. Over time, we

solved these problems by creating a new,

alternative culture for village ladies. We taught

thousands to read and write, starting with their

names—an incredibly empowering experience for

them. Thousands more discovered the power of a

shared community with other Grameen borrowers

who supported one another. They learned to

enjoy coming to the Grameen bank centres for

weekly meetings at which they would sing songs,

engage in simple exercises, and share stories

about their families and the small businesses they

had created ([4] pp. 65‒66).

Mark Munoz, in his book on international social

entrepreneurship, makes a similar point: social entre-

preneurs and social enterprises need to build relation-

ships, form alliances and partnerships (especially at a

local level), and collaborate with others ([11] pp. 48‒49,

70‒71, 86). This is partly because social enterprises

and social businesses have a mission to change

society, and this mission is compromised if they keep

the secrets of their success to themselves. It is also

because cooperation sometimes makes good business

sense. An important area of the social economy is that

of social franchising, which will be discussed later, and

this is an area in which networks are of fundamental

importance, because the success of any franchise

operation—social or otherwise—is largely down to its

ability to plug franchisees into a network of intel-

lectual property and sociability (see [11] p. 85, [12]),

in order to provide a relatively secure income. In this

area, there is a congruence of ends and means: it

makes good business sense to cooperate with those

who might otherwise be regarded as competitors, and

cooperation is crucial to the mission of a social

enterprise.

3. The Left and Social Enterprise

The growth of social enterprise may be a second best

to a genuinely left-wing, transformative, radical, so-

cialistic process. Social enterprise has appealed to the

right, and to centre-left social democrats, because it

emphasises self-help, telling the poor that they

should, and can, pull themselves up by their boot-

straps. Unsurprisingly, this engenders suspicion on the

left. There is a view in left-wing circles that capitalism

is beyond redemption and cannot be reformed, that the

overthrow of capitalism is what is needed if people's

lives are really to be improved, that capitalism needs to

be replaced with socialism, and before it can be so

replaced it needs to be destroyed.

Whether or not this is indeed the case is beyond

the scope of this paper, but there is a danger here of

turning left-wing anti-capitalist thought into the opium

of the people. We may await the messianic advent of

a socialistic order, and even work to hasten the day,

but we know it is not going to happen soon. This may

be frustrating for many people, but for the poorest

people of the world, who cannot patiently await this

messianic age, it is quite literally a matter of life and

death. Their human security needs to be enhanced,

their poverty needs to be alleviated, their real

freedoms—to use Sen's language [13]—need to be

expanded, and their lives need to be improved. And

for them, these things need to be done today. It is an

urgent human security imperative.

So the left can—and indeed must—be comfortable

with social enterprise, if not for the same reasons as

the right and centre-left. Social enterprise is a

movement that seeks to make a difference, alleviate

poverty, reduce exploitation, empower the poor, promote

solidarity, and build community. It seeks a more just

allocation of the means of production, distribution,

and exchange. These are objectives that reflect the

values of all shades of left-wing thought, from

nineteenth-century Marxism to present-day environ-

mentalism. Yunus's seven principles embody these

values and objectives, apart from the first part of

objective 6, which refers to the paying of market

wages. This is, admittedly, an important caveat, but in

these principles we see an attack on surplus value, on

alienation, on the naked cash nexus, and on the

unsustainable expansion of capitalism [14]. If the

objectives of social enterprise have appealed to the

right, this should be regarded as a victory for the left,

because the centre ground has been shifted. It should

not dilute the left's commitment to those same

objectives.

Left-wing anti-capitalist thought and social enter-

prise have shared objectives because they share the

same roots. They share a family resemblance because

they share a family tree. Their common roots are in

civil society, voluntary cooperation, and, more recently,

in local socialism. Let us briefly examine these in turn.

Firstly, civil society is frequently defined as a 'third

sector' of society, after the market and the state, but

it is less than satisfactory to define it in terms of what

it is not. Michael Waltzer defines civil society as 'the

space of uncoerced human association and also the

set of relational networks—formed for the sake of

family, faith, interest and ideology—that fill this space'

([15] p. 7). It has already been observed in this paper

that such relational networks are crucial to the

success of social enterprise, including within the

sphere of development.

Secondly, and more precisely, the civil society in

which social enterprise has its roots is the sphere of

voluntary cooperation. Voluntary cooperation plays an

important role in the history of socialism, from its

origins to the present day, in the form of mutualism,

for example, and the cooperative movement, which

has already been mentioned. More recently, however,

the right has claimed the sphere of voluntary activity

for itself. The left needs to reclaim this sphere. The

values of the left are the values of the French

Revolution—liberty, equality, and fraternity—but the

casual observer could today be forgiven for thinking

that right wingers believe in liberty, left wingers

believe in equality, and centrists believe in fraternity.

Yet these values are intertwined, and a left-wing

political focus on social enterprise may help to reclaim

the sphere of voluntary cooperation, and make its

expansion a matter of political consensus.

Thirdly, local solutions to local problems has often

been a central characteristic of social enterprise. In

the UK, this was initially driven by left-wing local

councils who were highly resistant to the agenda of

the Thatcher government. According to Jim Chandler:

Although politically a passing phase, local socialism

has left a valuable legacy. Economic development

was put on the menu of central local authority

functions…. Sheffield established the first council

sub-committee dedicated to economic redevel-

opment, while the GLC (Greater London Council)

under (Ken) Livingstone created a Greater London

Enterprise Board to preferentially fund cooperative

business start-ups ([16] p. 249).

Rory Ridley-Duff and Mike Bull observe 'that well-

established social enterprise networks (in London,

Liverpool and Manchester) surfaced where there were

strong community development networks during the

1980s' ([17] p. 46). Once again, we see that left-wing

anti-capitalist praxis—in the form of local socialism—

belongs to the same family tree as social enterprise.

These three points have an important theoretical

consequence, which is important enough to flag

briefly. In her introduction to the Scottish Enlight-

enment thinker Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History

of Civil Society, Fania Oz-Salzberger states:

It is difficult to see the moment in time when

Ferguson claims that society became 'civil'. In the

most important sense, it always was….

The foundations of civil society…are communal

bonds and public virtue, which are older than

property. Ferguson would not subscribe to

Rousseau's famous dictum, in his Discours sur

l'inégalité (1755), that the first appropriator of land

was 'the real founder of civil society' ([18] p. xviii).

In other words, it would be better to regard civil

society—including the social economy—as the 'first

sector', rather than follow the conventional ordering of

the economy (first sector), the state (second sector),

and civil society (third sector) [19]. The state and the

economy are the 'superstructure' (to use a word that

Marx borrowed from Ferguson) of civil society. They are

the sphere of competition for power and economic

capital. The social economy—social business, social

enterprise, social entrepreneurship, cooperatives, etc.—

is part of the infrastructure. It is the sphere of co-

operation, not competition, leading to the accumulation

of social capital and the enhancement of human security.

4. Social Franchising: The State of the Art and

Proposals for Future Research

We now turn to social franchising, which is a subset of

social enterprise. Commercial franchising is a form of

capitalism that demands an unusually high degree of

cooperation between people who might otherwise be

competitors, and, as has already been pointed out,

cooperation is also intrinsic to social enterprise. So the

cooperation that is a part of civil society is especially

relevant to social franchising, which is why I treat it as a

case study in all of the fields that intersect in this paper.

As well as the practice-based resources on social

franchising [20], there is a small but growing academic

literature on the subject. It was defined by Dominic

Montagu as early as 2002 as 'a franchise system,

usually run by a non-governmental organization, which

uses the structure of a commercial franchise to achieve

social goals' ([21] p. 129). There is an annotated

bibliography ('scoping review') on the subject published

in the UK [22], and the concept is occasionally men-

tioned in the more general academic literature on social

enterprise and social business (including by Yunus and

Munoz). While (perhaps ironically) the concept has not

been standardised in detail, and Montagu's definition is

open to multiple interpretations, it is a way of using a

specific tool of capitalism to address specific social

problems.

Social franchising is particularly important to NGO

work in healthcare, and has been applied in education

in India, Brazil, and South Africa. It allows small NGOs

to tap into the benefits of social enterprise and social

entrepreneurship, notably their financial sustainability,

with donations or investments being recycled rather

than spent. As with commercial franchising, social

franchising builds a collaborative framework for small/

medium NGOs to learn lessons from each other, avoid

mistakes that have already been made, and achieve

economies of scale while retaining the benefits of being

small and responsive to community need and partic-

ipation. Therefore, small NGOs, working together, can

have a greater impact due to better deployment of

available resources. Social franchising draws on com-

mercial franchising expertise, and provides the advan-

tages of a common brand, including quality assurance

for small and large donors. Craig Dearden-Phillips

points out that social franchising is particularly suitable

for three types of social enterprises: those that are

easily replicable, those where a well-known brand

matters, and those that need to reach 'critical mass' to

succeed ([23] pp. 142‒143, 148). These criteria all

apply to educational programs run by small-medium

NGOs in Southeast Asia, and it is to that subject that

we now turn.

A great deal of primary education for refugee

children in Southeast Asia, for example on the Thai-

Burma border, is provided by small-medium NGOs,

though this is impossible to quantify with any precision

for various reasons, not least the unknown numbers of

refugees and stateless persons of all ages. There are,

however, projects aimed at rectifying this. Another

reason is the frequent movement of refugees and their

families, and this, combined with the absence of a

common curriculum in NGO-run schools, creates

difficulties for poor refugee children in obtaining a

consistent education in which each level of learning is

built on a prior level [24]. This is a shortcoming that

social franchising can help to address, because stan-

dardisation—of pedagogy, curriculum, materials, gov-

ernance—is an inherent part of social franchising.

Informal social franchising has already enabled some

NGOs to lower the cost of their educational work, e.g.

between 2004 and 2012 Khom Loy Development in

Mae Sot, Thailand, lowered the cost of opening a new

classroom from US$3,000 to under $500, and they aim

to reduce the cost still further, to $200 per classroom.

Standards of teaching in NGO schools are very

uneven. Raising standards and building capacity

among teachers and volunteers requires inter alia:

cost effective, sound, replicable methodologies and

models; knowledge sharing networks and communities

of practice; communication technology in some cases;

and strategic standardisation of pedagogy, curricula,

materials, and governance. It is important to balance

standardisation with cultural relevance and local

negotiation, and this is something that social fran-

chising is able to reflect, also thereby contributing to

cultural safety (see [25]). In my own fieldwork

experience, teachers in NGO schools are often from

the same ethnic group as the pupils. This, it seems to

me, constitutes good practice in terms of cultural

safety, because such teachers are less likely 'to blame

the victims of historical processes for their current

plights' ([25] p. 18). In Winston Mak's words: 'social

franchising allows residents to retain local democratic

control of community services' [26].

Montessori schooling has shown some strengths in

this regard; however, this needs to be evaluated

further and compared with other educational systems.

Within the context applied research on social

franchising in NGO education in Southeast Asia, such

a comparative evaluation would have as its purpose

the development of robust, replicable social franchise

methodologies that enable relevant NGOs to deliver

quality 'good practice' primary education to the

poorest children. More precisely, this would involve the

examination of actual work in social franchising, and in

commercial educational franchising in the West, it

would develop best practice principles for social

franchising in educational NGO work, and identify in

partnership with local communities and NGOs ways in

which social franchising can be expanded to help

achieve the millennium development goal of universal

primary education. It would have the practical benefit

of focusing resource deployment away from foun-

dational program development, and towards delivery. I

will expand on this shortly.

This would constitute an extension of my own

research on NGO cooperation [1,3], a topic that has

been identified by the Australian government as

important to development. This research has been of

interest to some NGOs in Northern Thailand (Blood

Foundation, Fortune, other members of the Fang Valley

Development Network, and Bring The Elephant Home).

It has described different levels (or dimensions) of

cooperation between small NGOs: national (through a

peak body like the Cooperation Committee for

Cambodia (CCC)), local, as part of a network of formal

and informal relationships, and within a single NGO

that operates as a cooperative. A franchise network is

not based on voluntary cooperation to the same

degree, but it is another dimension of NGO cooper-

ation, and it has the potential to enhance NGO

cooperation within Southeast Asian nation states and

internationally within the region (a goal of the CCC).

Research on social franchising in educational NGO

work would have significant economic, environmental,

social, and human security benefits. Educational

attainment levels are directly linked both to economic

development, and, more importantly, to beneficial

social outcomes. Development in Western countries

has been strongly linked to the development of

national education systems and free, compulsory

education. In a knowledge economy, investments in

education pay off in higher quality, more knowledge-

intensive jobs, as illustrated by India's increasing

competitiveness in the global economy, together with

a growing middle class that is highly oriented towards

progress. Similar evolutions are under way in many

African nations, such as Nigeria and Kenya. Wider

access to education has profound social effects,

including lower birth rates and greater gender equity.

Research on social franchising in educational NGO

work would have significant economic, environmental,

social, and human security benefits. Educational

attainment levels are directly linked both to economic

development, and, more importantly, to beneficial

social outcomes. Development in Western countries

has been strongly linked to the development of

national education systems and free, compulsory

education. In a knowledge economy, investments in

education pay off in higher quality, more knowledge-

intensive jobs, as illustrated by India's increasing

competitiveness in the global economy, together with

a growing middle class that is highly oriented towards

progress. Similar evolutions are underway in many

African nations, such as Nigeria and Kenya. Wider

access to education has profound social effects,

including lower birth rates and greater gender equity.

The development of social franchise methodologies

could deliver significant benefit to NGOs and

optimisation of their resources in the following ways:

training other organisations; benchmarking, selection

and evaluation of franchisees to ensure delivery

quality, integrity, mission-focus, and standards; and

the development of long-term strategies to ensure

financial viability and security (which can otherwise be

threatened by changing donor priorities). Such

research would also contribute to the Millennium Devel-

opment Goal (MDG) of universal primary education.

The MDGs come with measurable indicators; however,

refugees and stateless peoples often slip through the

net because their numbers are unknown and their

existence is not always recognised. This research

agenda addresses some of the Istanbul Principles and

Siem Reap Consensus on CSO Development Effec-

tiveness, including human rights (the right to education),

gender equity, transparency and accountability, and

sustainable change with an engaged private sector.

Furthermore, it would turn these into long-term human

security benefits through the sustainability that is a part

of social enterprise, and through in-country capacity

building.

Thus, the equal dialogue between North and South

that is an intrinsic foundation of Yunus's social business

paradigm (and of Sen's capabilities approach) is

instantiated in a participatory approach to development

and capacity building. Furthermore, the approach

outlined here synthesises the Asian and the European

paradigms of social enterprise. Consequently, if further

research in this field is to make a significant con-

tribution to human security, it must involve collab-

oration between researchers from the global North and

the global South, and the process of capacity building

must extend well beyond primary education and into

research itself.

5. Conclusion

In short, this is a paper about praxis, the unity of

theory and practice. The theoretical critique of global

capitalism, which is a foundation of left-wing politics, is

unified with the practice of social enterprise, and, more

specifically, of social franchising within a development

context. Not only is social franchising a subset of social

enterprise; it also instantiates the ethos of cooperation

that is constitutive of civil society. Social franchising in a

development context—such as educational NGO work

in Southeast Asia—is something that can be promoted

in neo-liberal terms, and carried out by people with

neo-liberal beliefs and a neo-liberal agenda.

Nevertheless, its methodology—summarised in Yunus's

seven principles—and its raison d'être of social justice

mean that, in concrete terms, this is a field in which

research and practice can also be supported by

academics and practitioners who have a more left-wing

political orientation. The expansion of civil society,

cooperation, social franchising, and social enterprise

more generally, can become a matter of political

consensus, and a contributor to human security [27].

References and Notes

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than a synthetic judgement; that is, it is a matter of

how we define left-wing thought rather than what we

observe in left-wing thought.

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fourth sector, confining the term 'third sector' to

purely non-profit entities. However, this distinction

seems overly legalistic within the context of the

European and Asian paradigms, which emphasise

motivation over process.

20. See especially the website of the London-

based International Centre for Social Franchising

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24. I have avoided any reference to pedagogic

jargon such as 'scaffolding' or 'sequential learning'

here, because we are talking about very low-cost

education in which it is unrealistic to expect teachers

to have much training in or knowledge of such

pedagogy. The whole point of the exercise is to make

the best possible use of the extremely limited

resources available, practising scaffolding or

sequential learning to the best extent possible, but

recognising that it will be of a more 'rough-and-ready'

type than such pedagogic jargon might imply.

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26. Mak W. Social Franchising: A Driver for a Better

Economy. Available from: http://www.respublica.

org.uk/item/Driving-Britain-to-Popular-Capitalism-with

-the-Social-Franchising-Co-operative-Model (accessed

on 19 October 2013).

27. Numerous academic colleagues have discussed

with me the ideas that have gone into this article, and

I am grateful to them all, especially Dr Anna Hayes,

who read and commented on a complete draft. I

would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for

their comments, and acknowledge financial support

from the University of Southern Queensland for the

ethnographic research from which this article has

drawn.